Cardiac arrhythmias currently affect over 14 million individuals and claim the lives of 300,000 each year in the United States. Two common treatments for arrhythmia patients are cardioversion and defibrillation. In these treatments, clinicians deliver low-energy or high-energy electrical shocks to the heart to convert it to normal sinus rhythm. However, there is no guarantee that any given shock will work. If a given shock does not work, clinicians must make decisions, often in a matter of seconds, as to what to do to increase the chance of success on the next shock.
If the first shock fails, the current standard of care dictates that the only easily accessible option clinicians have is to increase the energy of the shock. However, this practice can cause unnecessary pain for the patient without ensuring increased success. According to the literature, less harmful but possibly equally effective alternatives, such as switching shock vectors or reducing transthoracic impedance, exist. Unfortunately, these alternatives are out of reach because there is no safe, standardized way to implement them quickly.
Over the years, there have been methods of switching shocking vectors for cardioversions and defibrillations, but there has been no method for applying a standardized pressure over the external patches being utilized. An example of relevant prior art is U.S. Published Patent Application No. 2006/0282124, which discloses methods that utilize transcutaneous cardioversion vectors, or those which require at least one internal cathode to produce a vector between an internal catheter and external electrode. However, the insertion of at least one internal catheter is more invasive than desired in some cases.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,554,928 discloses the “Booker Box,” an electrophysiological switching unit that interconnects multiple electrode catheter leads, stimulator leads, and recorder channel leads. However, there are no standardized devices for simply switching between two shock vectors and reducing transthoracic impedance for external adhesive patches.